


Tintinnabulation

by Shadowdianne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 05:05:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4774637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/Shadowdianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was like the memory of a sound you can hear in your brain but whenever you open your mouth the melody disappear as quickly as it had come. Frustrating and at the same time painful. Painful because she had fell in what she had vowed to avoid; love again."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tintinnabulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GardensOfTheMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GardensOfTheMoon/gifts).



_"The lingering sound of a ringing bell that occurs after the bell has been struck."_

* * *

 

When Regina started to understand how magic worked she learnt that every single spell, even the ones that didn’t require a particular item to work, were always built carefully. No word was said louder than other, not sentence was created sloppier than the rest. Casting curses was something that could be called an art in some circles and so she realized that all the years she had spent learning how to look at something to the point of extenuation were finally being useful.

Soon enough she had developed the same way of thinking in the rest of the things she needed to do. First as a consort later as a Queen. Everything needed to be based on something, every plan needed to be carefully thought and manufactured with the same finesse that the fairies and dwarves created the dust that they later used. (Not on children like Regina of course but that was a war she didn’t want to start at that time.)

Later on, as years passed, she realized that people around her always seemed to need someone around them to rely on; fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, partners… the list was infinite and the ways she was able to use –and abuse- from them by using those other people that were their base, their root, was incredibly easy. Almost too much.

She had used that idea with hundreds of children in order to defeat the witch that lived deep on the enchanted forest and she used the trait she had acquired by years of careful learning of magic- noticing what was based on what and who depended on whom- in order to become one of the most powerful Queens of all times.

It was quite interesting, if not cruel, how she had fallen in the same trap after years of hurt and grief over Daniel’s death.

She had let her hate fester, her tears never enough, her cries leaving her unsatisfied. She had believed and accepted the fact that she would be alone as long as she lived. And, in a way, she was content with the certainty that she had lost the one who would have been the love of her life, the person who was able to see every part of her with only a glance. It was easier to accept that she had lost him irrevocably, her future destroyed.

Until… well, other players started to appear in a game she had been playing by herself all along.

She found herself looking at bright green eyes that smiled at her shyly for a second, making something inside of her gasp and try to take whatever was being offered, so easily and at the same time so dangerous in front of her. She had almost burned the first night she had met Emma Swan and she had felt the fire inside of her every single day after the arrival of the blonde to a sleepy town in where she wasn’t a Queen anymore, in where her magic was nonexistent, in where the lessons she had been taught suddenly started to get blurry, weak, as the curse around her started to crumb and fall.

It had been her fault, she reasoned at that time, and so she didn’t thought twice about the pang on her chest when it dawned on her the fact that Emma had really saved her from the wraith and was in probably by now deserted enchanted forest. The place that had seen her at her best… and worst.

She had truly been a fool because, when sickness reaches you you suddenly realize how easy was for you to breathe and move when you are unable to do so. When you can’t think clearly you realize how effortless was to be able to focus on something without problem. You realize and you mourn and it’s the realization what makes you wish for better times.

She is mostly there, realizing.

Realizing for example, how deeply Emma had been engraved in her eyes, her jacket, her hair, her irises or the whiff of cinnamon that always seemed to follow her. She had become accustomed to that, to her voice, to the whimpers she did whenever she didn’t understood something. And it had been so easy to not realize how fond of those things she had grew into that the first day after the blonde’s disappearance she had needed to blink when she had go with Henry to Granny’s sensing that something was inexplicably wrong with the place, almost as if something was there and yet it wasn’t the second she entered there.

A ghost perhaps?

She had become accustomed to the way Emma looked at her whenever she spoke to Henry in those days in where the two women saw each other on the dinner. Emma’s irises always twinkled whenever Henry tried to make Regina let him eat something that had too much sugar on it for the brunette’s tastes. She had become accustomed on the way Emma tilted her head whenever Henry teased her, she had become accustomed to her own responses to the blonde whenever she felt the need to scoff at her. She had become accustomed to pretend that Emma didn’t make her laugh and yet every time she heard someone laughing she turned to her right, almost expecting to see Emma with the secret smile she always had seconds before exploding in a full laugh. Not that they had had the time of laughing of course, or simply being friends, but those weeks in where everything was easier and not so painful Regina had learnt a thing or two about the blonde, things that she had pretended she didn’t care about and yet… now she realized how much of a part of her day they’ve turned into.

Like the fact that now wherever she went she could almost feel Emma in there, the shadow of the woman permanently near, the memory of what she had been able to do for her always haunting her.

It was like the memory of a sound you can hear in your brain but whenever you open your mouth the melody disappear as quickly as it had come. Frustrating and at the same time painful. Painful because she had fell in what she had vowed to avoid; love again.

It was certainly laughable considering Robin and what he needed to mean for her but when Emma had disappeared the phantom pain inside of her had started to swell telling her a story of rejected feelings she hadn’t been able to see until then. Or hadn’t been able to digest perhaps.

None wasn’t there, at the other side of the other, none wasn’t there, trusting her even if she didn’t need to. There wasn’t anyone ready to smile at her and keep trying, just for her.

The only thing that was there was the mist, the blurry lines of someone that was slowly fading away, turning into someone else because she had wanted to preserve her. The lost sound of a voice that kept nagging her, that kept waking her up with a retort already dying on her lips at the cries and tears at the words Emma had screamed at her, ready to immolate herself just for her, for what she told her back in a day when she had been unable to believe in her.

“I always have your back”

And now she sat there, alone, looking at blurry figures and feeling a ring on her ears of the conversations she would have had, of the words she would have said if she had known any better. Because love, as magic, needs a careful mixture of words and care.


End file.
